April 09, 2007

Our culture of music

Greetings Rock 'N' Rollers, and welcome to Our Culture of Music, a
place where we'll take a glance at the weird and wonderful musical
issues that greet us in the 21st century. I'm Jag Jones, and I'll be
your guide when exploring what it takes to compile the perfect MP3 play
list, why commercial music stores can scare the crap out of you, as
well as more serious topics like how a great song or a great album can
totally dictate how your day is going to be.
To give you an indication as to where I'm coming from, let me just say
that my CD collection is so large, that my banana box sized bedroom is
morphing magically into a shoebox, complete with wonderful discoveries
like every album Ryan Adams has ever made, to those Limp Bizkit albums
I bought when I was 16 and almost 9 years after the fact, can't pay
anyone to take it out off my hands and off my cramped CD racks. Aside
from that unfortunate glitch in my collection, I take pride in having
albums that mean something. Whether they're deemed legendary by
critics/music aficionados or by quality-hungry fans, I love to own
albums of substance — they can make you dance, make you sad, make you
think, or make you pump your fist with the passion that Joe Strummer
demonstrated for years.
Most importantly, I find it a privilege to be a rock 'n' roll
journalist. Yes, I whine and moan about the stupidity that is Britney
Spears, and the perpetual pissing match known as hip hop, but I
genuinely love music and telling the stories of those involved within
it. Of course I've had to encounter "artists" that I don't care for,
for the sake of getting published, but I have also encountered those
who have been trend-setters and trailblazers for where music is today.
However, this isn't a place to provide my resumé highlights, so I'm
going to shut up now and get into my inaugural Jamilton blog — How to
cope with a Musical Snob. It's a quick subject to tackle, but a good
one nonetheless.
First of all, this may be an ironic topic to cover considering that I
get paid at times to judge bands/artists a certain way, but I think
whether you're in the media or just a fan, there is a difference
between being a complimentary broadcaster of great music, to one who
has opinions that alienates everyone from miles around. I'm sure I've
been called a musical snob behind my back once and awhile, but that was
probably something said by some frickin' Nickelback listener — someone
who obviously isn't a music fan. Moving on ...
Basically, a music snob is someone who takes their choices in musicians
so seriously, that they fail to acknowledge anyone else's opinion about
them — if they do, it is usually a profanity laced rant that's part
insults, part condescending music history lessons. To put this into
layman's terms, these kind of people are the ones that know smoking is
bad for them, but find some sort of rationale that they can use to
excuse themselves from the habit, while trying to get you to light up
with them. When it comes to handling individuals such as these, you
have to remember that you're likely not going to sway them from
whatever their stances may be. So, if you can't beat them, join them.
There's nothing these hipsters hate more than having a debate with
someone just like them. If they're sitting around trying to convince
you that Broken Social Scene is one of the greatest things to happen to
Canadian music, the best approach to take is to tell them that you
actually think Platinum Blonde or The Parachute Club are two of
Canada's most influential collectives, because it'll likely annoy this
person so much, that you may actually make your way out of that
conversation unscathed. The key though is to debate those bands with
as much passion and vigor as the BSS fan would about his indie rock
heroes.
Think about it — a music snob is more likely to snap at the idea of you
debating for bands that don't have great significance to the culture,
because they just won't be able to compute such brain coagulating
notions such as the one mentioned above. If this doesn't work, steal
their white belts, break their thick framed glasses and diss their
collection of limited edition 7 inches — see how tough they are then.
Til next week